News Bytes

The Times of India reported on a private reception attended by President Bush last week, where he is said to have expressed emphatic opposition to a bill in congress that would eliminate the H-1B visa. Immigration attorney Paresh Shah was present at the meeting, a reception in honor of Mississippi Republican gubernatorial candidate Haley Barbour, and asked Bush specifically about Rep Tom Tancredo's bill terminating the H-1B visa program (HR 2688).

According to the article, "Bush spread his hands as wide apart as possible and stated unequivocally: 'Tancredo and I are at opposite ends of the pole. I fully do not support Congressman Tancredo's bill against H-1Bs.' Shah said."

"From his immediate grasp of the H-1B issue, and his strong support for continuing the program, he understands also that these foreign specialty workers are basically a much needed element of our economy," Shah said.

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Last week Eduardo Aguirre, Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS) announced the new Office of Citizenship and that Alfonso Aguilar has been appointed as the office's first chief. The new office will "promote instruction and training on citizenship responsibilities to both immigrants and U.S. citizens," according to a CIS news release.

"It is our duty to ensure that the process of becoming an American is meaningful to the candidate and beneficial for the country," Aguirre said.

Aguilar most recently worked as the Press Secretary for Latin America and the Caribbean at the U.S. Agency for International Development. Before that, he held similar posts at the U.S. Department of Energy and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. He is a graduate of the University of Puerto Rico School of Law and the University of Notre Dame.

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A Canadian married gay couple were not allowed to enter the United States last week when they insisted on filling out a single customs clearance form declaring themselves a family, the New York Times reported. The two were on their way to attend a human rights conference in Georgia when a customs agent would not accept their joint declaration.  A U.S. official in Canada said the refusal was lawful under the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which defined marriage as "only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife." Same-sex marriage was made legal in Ontario this summer when the top appeals court in that province ruled that current federal marriage law was discriminatory.

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New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg revised his immigration policy last week to make it harder for city agencies to report illegal immigrants to federal authorities. Seeking to comply with a 1999 federal court ruling that struck down the city's policy of prohibiting city employees from passing on immigration information, Bloomberg had replaced the "don't tell" policy with a "don't ask" policy that restricted city employees from asking about a person's immigration status. Hoping to quiet a growing number of critics, especially those in the Hispanic community, the mayor signed a new executive order establishes a broad new privacy policy that prohibits city workers in most cases from spreading information about a person's immigration status, sexual orientation, income tax records and welfare assistance. The order applies to law enforcement officers, except in cases involving criminal activity and terrorism.

"It remains to be seen whether the new order adequately protects immigrants and others, and whether the federal government will challenge the new city order," said Stephen Yale-Loehr, an immigration lawyer who teaches at Cornell Law School.

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The White House issued a news release last week to inform the public of a new executive directive on “Integration and Use of Screening Information to Protect Against Terrorism.” Available online at: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/09/20030916-5.html, the directive authorizes the Attorney General to establish an organization to consolidate the Government's terrorist screening process, and calls for increased information sharing between other executive officials, including the Secretary of Homeland Security, the Secretary of State, the Director of Central Intelligence, and the heads of other executive departments.